Heard around the West

What does the well-dressed park ranger
wear to work at Yellowstone National Park? A
gas mask, of course, if the work station is at the park's western
gate. Especially on dead-calm winter days, a pall of pollution
awaits staffers as they deal with up to 1,200 snowmobilers idling
their gaseous engines. The Clinton administration tried to ban
private snowmobiles and their exhaust from the park. But when the
Bush team moved into the White House, snowmobile manufacturers and
the tourist town of West Yellowstone, Mont., found a friendlier
reception. So while the Park Service reassesses how to weigh
employee health vs. economic development in the rural West, park
staffers have taken to suiting up. The respirators, reports
Associated Press, help combat sore throats, burning eyes, drippy
noses and a job that Ashea Mills told the Washington Post
has become a nightmare: "It's chaos. It's loud. It's
smelly. It's dangerous ... it's just too much." Twenty employees
have requested gas masks.

Here's a tidbit for the venerable Ripley's
"Believe it or Not." A Texas man faces up to
20 years in prison for shooting his girlfriend because he thought
she was about to say "New Jersey." The man, Thomas Ray Mitchell,
54, was known to come unglued when the name of the Garden State was
uttered in his presence, reports Associated Press. Relatives said
mentioning "Wisconsin," "Mars," and "Snickers" could also send him
over the edge.

Ruth Stoneman must believe strongly in
thrift and in the adage: Crime does not pay.
She was standing at the counter of Moscow, Idaho's U.S. Bank
recently, helping her two sons empty their piggy banks, when a man
began to hold up the bank. Stoneman went into action, yelling out
to another son just walking in - 12-year-old Nate - to run and call
911. After he took off, she grabbed one of her son's piggy banks
and lunged at the robber, but as luck would have it, Stoneman
collided with a customer instead. The Lewiston Morning
Tribune reports that in the commotion the robber managed
to escape. One thing he's probably learned: When you're trying to
pull a caper, don't mess with Ruth Stoneman.

John Krist, a columnist for
California's Ventura County
Star, just couldn't believe the
righteous indignation. People have been railing against an Alaskan
company's proposal to tap rivers in Northern California, then ship
the water south to San Diego in gigantic bladders, hauled by
tugboats. Krist found himself wondering why this was any more
absurd, say, than what California has already accomplished. Towing
water in sea-going sacks, he points out, may not be cost-efficient,
but what water project in California has ever made economic or
environmental sense? The state built a dam in a national park
(Yosemite), flooded a magnificent valley (Hetch Hetchy), then
shipped the water by a 155-mile aqueduct to San Francisco. Krist
also asks, "What could be more preposterous than forcing a huge
man-made river to flow nearly 2,000 feet uphill to cross the
Tehachapi Mountains and deliver snowmelt from the Mother Lode to
Los Angeles?" Compared to these hare-brained schemes that allowed
California to boom, he says, "Hauling a bag of water through the
ocean seems a model of technological
restraint."

Unintentionally funny headlines in a
newspaper, such as "Red tape holds up new
bridge," are always a kick to spot. But editors flinch when they
read wrongheaded headlines they've allowed to get printed, such as
these examples collected by the Columbia Journalism
Review: "Miners refuse to work after death," "Stud tires
out," "Drunk gets nine months in violin case," and, "Kids make
nutritious snacks."

Would you like to have legs as tough as
nails? Just try sand-skiing, an aerobic
sport invented by Bill Koch, 45, the first American to win an
Olympic medal in cross-country skiing. Koch taught some of his
sandy techniques to 14 very pale Alaskans on Molokai, the most
rural of the Hawaiian Islands. He told the swimsuited skiers to
scout the thin film of water that waves leave behind, then chase
behind on skis. Koch says the land-skiers get in some good runs on
the island's skiable beach, reports the Anchorage Daily
News. The conditioning part, he adds, is humping back up
the beach to catch the next retreating
wave.

Edward Albee
is a prolific playwright (Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and he's still going strong,
but the Boulder, Colo., public library apparently thinks he's
extended his reach to books about the American West. According to a
library flyer, a discussion group was getting ready to tackle
The Monkey Wrench Gang "by Edward
Albee."

Livestock
fascinate the British artist Damien Hirst.
He chainsaws cows lengthwise, preserves them in formaldehyde and
seals each half of an animal in transparent acrylic. His conceptual
art was a big hit in New York, though some visitors muttered about
the smell. These days Hirst has moved on to garbage. In London,
Hirst created art by strewing the floor of a pricey art gallery
with cigarette butts, empty beer bottles and other debris. The
"work" was valued at six figures, and visitors thronged the
opening. But the next day, the gallery director told the
New York Times, "We realized that someone had
come through and, well, sort of tidied up." Far from being upset,
the artist said he found the swept-up state of his art
"hysterically funny," and working from photographs, the gallery
restored his intended chaos.

Betsy Marston is editor of
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News in Paonia, Colorado. Quirky or humorous Western
doings - the definition remains loose - can be e-mailed to her at
betsym@hcn.org.